Chapter 5
Sunset
In recent years, Princess Celestia had found that the evening hours just before sunset had become her favorite time of day. Court was over, dinner was just around the corner, and barring the occasional 'emergency' she was essentially free to take time for herself. Tonight this 'her' time was being used to enjoy a good pot of tea, and read an interesting book. ...And maybe reflect a bit on how mundane her routine had become. Raise the sun, breakfast, Morning Court (Smile and nod, then either politely agree, politely pass the buck, or subtly decline without actually saying so), a brief lunch, Afternoon Court(Wash, rinse, repeat), then her time, followed by dinner, lowering the sun, raising the moon, and sleep, if she felt like it.
She tried to vary things by doing something different with her personal time, but it wasn't helping much anymore. She rarely got to go out among the 'common' ponies anymore, and looked forward the Summer Sun Celebration each year, because it gave her an excuse to do just that, if only for a little while. ...Maybe she should arrange for her personal appearance to be held at a different location each year? And of course, don't even get her started on the Grand Galloping Gala. There were times she wanted to just collapse the main ballroom on everypony there, just to shake things up.
Maybe it was high time she took a personal student again? At least it would give her an excuse to put aside her 'royal duties' every once in a while. She'd have to remember to attend the entrance exams at her school later this year to see about finding potential candidates.
...Either way, she needed to find something to put some surprises back into her life.
A few years from now, she would look back on this day, and realize she should have known better than to give fate such an open invitation.
"EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!"
A Dalek beam sailed past their heads to blast a chunk out of the wall beside them as Ditzy and Flower Shine scrambled to get to safety. Their luck had finally been stretched thin. As Ditzy had hoped, the exit from the Dalek command room had led up to a possible exit from the tunnels. But as she'd feared, there were more Daleks guarding it, and this time, there had been no way to sneak past. Their best option had been for Shine to blast a hole in the line with her stazer pistol, and then to run as fast as they could, with a hornet's nest worth of Daleks blasting away at their retreating rumps.
Luckily for the two mares, on the ground, Daleks weren't all that fast, at least not compared to the speed a couple of desperate ponies could put out if they set their minds to it, and they were able to quickly put a fair distance between them and the metal death dealers.
They rushed around a corner and up yet another flight of stairs, only to come face to face with a heavy wooden door. And a locked one at that. They bucked at it for a moment before they began to hear the Dalek's high pitched voices approaching from below.
Grasping her pistol between her hooves, she quickly adjusted a dial on its back, then grasping the weapon in her mouth again, pointed it at the door and fired. There was a blinding flash of light accompanied by a deafening noise, and the whole door, as well as the section of wall that had been plastered over it, blew outwards, disintegrating into a fine powder as it fell. They rushed through, finding themselves in some sort of storage room. And then they dove to the floor as another Dalek beam flashed between them.
They looked at each other, then back at the stair, where a Dalek was just beginning to hover its way up.
"Blunder the rockslide!" Ditzy shouted.
"Agh, wzz jst thnkn," Shine said, her mouth busy resetting the pistol. Putting it back in mouth, she looked up and fired twice. The first struck the Dalek in the collar just below its head, the second struck the ceiling halfway down the stairs, causing it to collapse and block up the tunnel exit.
When the dust finally settled, the only sound was the heavy breathing of the two as they stared at the collapsed passage, half-expecting the Daleks to come bursting back out. After a couple minutes of silence, it seemed that they were either unable or unwilling to follow.
Ditzy glanced at Shine, "So..." she said, finally having the piece of mind to control her speech. "Who's...the Doctor?"
"Someone...someone very special," she answered. She then frowned, "And probably our best hope of stopping what's about to happen if we can find him in time. We'd better find a way out of here."
Ditzy just nodded, getting up to look around for another exit, when the world suddenly went sideways...
Sweet little kid, that Lyra, he just hoped she didn't grow up to obsess over a 'Funny Doctor' or whatever. ...He wasn't sure the multiverse could handle another Amelia Pond.
He'd slipped out after a suitable period of time, leaving the little filly asleep in that odd position. Apparently she really did find it comfortable.
"Ok, now, next order of business: Find the TARDIS, Macintosh, and whoever took them. Then, make the last one feel really bad about it..." he said to himself.
But how to go about it? He was the Doctor, he'd once saved the entire Earth in twenty minutes using only a laptop, a phone, and his extraordinary amount of wits. In comparison, tracking down his missing TARDIS shouldn't be too hard, after all, this time around he still had his-
"Screwdriver!" Of course! He quickly pulled the device out. "Yes...brilliant! Let's see, jury rig the pulse emitter by crossing it into the subharmonic relay...yes, that'd remote trigger the homing protocol. But, I'd need some kind of high energy source in order to broadcast into the vortex, and even then it'd only have an effective range of a few decades..."
*THOOM*
The shockwave seemed to roll through the city. Not strong enough to shatter windows, but strong enough to give them a decent rattle. The Doctor looked up from figuring out how to rewire his screwdriver. "...Hello, what was that?" Turning the screwdriver on, he scanned around for a second before examining it. "Seismic activity...no. Residual pressure wave from shaped explosive charge... That was a bomb."
He quickly used the screwdriver again, to point him towards the source of the shockwave. He turned around, and then up, to where the screwdriver was pointing, where he could see the top of a large castle beyond the buildings of the city. "Hmm...either their Princess is having a party that's gotten out of hand...or somebody's being naughty..."
Ditzy was on her side, which was strange, because she could have sworn that she was standing upright a second ago. "Huzwaa?" she muttered, and it wasn't her speech acting up, she was just too disoriented to even try speaking correctly.
Somewhere else in the room, Shine was likewise picking herself up off the floor. "...I think we're too late."
Celestia blinked in surprise as her room shook violently for a moment, causing the teapot to be vibrated off her desk and smash to the floor. She set her cup down and rushed to the doors of her chambers, throwing them open as she went. The pegasus guards outside were glancing around warily, wings spread in alarm. The Princess glanced down the corridor in concern. From the sound of the boom that had accompanied the shaking, the explosion had come from the direction of the great hall.
"With me," She ordered, heading off, the guards falling into step behind her. They hadn't gone far before they heard strange noises from ahead. ...Noises quickly followed by the screams of ponies. Now at full gallop, they were met by another pegasus guard halfway.
"My princess!" he gasped, sounding completely shell-shocked, "We-we're under attack!"
Celestia had suspected as much from the start, but hearing it confirmed still sent a pang of outrage through her. She honestly couldn't recall the last time someone had directly assaulted the castle, it had been so long. "Do we have any idea who they are?"
The pegasus shook his head wildly. "There was some sort of explosion in the throne room, most of the floor in the middle was just...gone! And then these...things...just came pouring up out of it, spraying some sort of death spells everywhere! The Captain sent me to find you while he tried to contain them...but there's just so many!"
Celestia winced. The throne room. If this had happened just a little earlier during Afternoon Court... As it was there should have only been a few guards on duty there, and maybe a couple of the cleaning staff. ...Not that any loss of life as acceptable to her.
They arrived in the Great Hall to find it in chaos. A line of pegasai and unicorn corps guards stood against a wave of white and gold...things that swept out from the entrance to the throne room. The unicorns had raised magical barriers, but the attackers responded by firing beams of green energy from the smaller of their two stubby appendages, threatening to overwhelm the barriers through sheer numbers alone. Meanwhile the pegasai corps were dive-bombing the creatures, attempting to use the fine blades built into their wing armor to damage them, but whatever they were made of, it was obvious that it was more than enough to withstand the attacks. In response, the pegasai were cut down en mass as the creatures responded to their ineffectual attacks with their own far more lethal ones. Celestia watched in horror as one guard took a direct hit. His entire body lit up with a green glow, his skeleton showing through for a split second before the glow faded, and then the pony simply fell from the air, long dead even before he hit the ground.
"Captain!" Celestia shouted, rushing over to where she saw the captain of her guard barking orders, desperately trying to salvage the situation.
"Princess! The large, alabaster coated pegasus responded. "Princess, I'm so sorry! We were caught totally off guard. We're trying to push them back, but there's so many...and their power..."
"Captain, none of this is your fault, I'm sure you have done admirably," she told him, her tone as consoling as it could be under the circumstance, "But your time to fight is past. Evacuate the palace, gather everyone you can find, staff and guard alike and get out! I will deal with these...creatures."
"But Princess Cele-" the Captain tried to protest.
"GO!" Celestia ordered in a tone that brokered no argument. "...These foes are beyond any of you."
The Captain swallowed. "...Of course Princess," he responded, giving her a quick bow before ordering the retreat.
It didn't take the Doctor long to reach the road leading up to the castle drawbridge. Like the old Earth saying 'All roads lead to Rome,' apparently in this city, all roads led to the castle. He could see that a large crowd had gathered, apparently curious as to the source of the boom from earlier, just as he was, but they were blocked from getting any nearer to the castle by a pair of burly looking white pegasai with blue tails and golden armor with an almost roman stile crest with blue hair to match their tails.
While he didn't fancy another chase with the authorities, the Doctor had never been one to let something like a pair of guards deter him from sating his curiosity. Reaching into his jacket again, he pulled out a simple, black leather, wallet, and then strolled right through the crowd of ponies.
"Right, make way, excuse me, Royal Castle Inspector, coming through!" he shouted, flipping the wallet open and waving it around, showing the apparently blank piece of paper to anyone who looked. Of course, the beauty of psychic paper was that it only appeared blank to those who already knew what it was or who had sufficient training to block its effects. And though he would, reluctantly, admit he still new comparatively little about pony culture, he was nearly-mostly sure that no one here would have either, and instead all would see an ID declaring him to be a Royal Castle Inspector or something to that effect.
Not that this mattered much, seeing as at his appearance there were screams, cries, and other general reactions of fear as the crowd parted before him like the Red Sea to Moses. ...General reactions of fear from everypony, that is, except the pair of guards blocking the bridge.
"Entrance to the palace is forbidden at this time," one of them said in a toneless voice as the Doctor made it to the front of the crowd.
"Ah, yes, but remember the part about Royal Castle Inspector?" the Doctor asked, waving the psychic paper at them.
Neither of the two looked at it, or even blinked for that matter. "Entrance to the palace is forbidden at this time," the one who hadn't said it the first time said.
"...You know, you two are very good guards. Real stoic types...not even reacting like a normal person...pony...would if a big alien came waltzing up to them and waved a badge in their faces..."
"Entrance to the palace is forbidden at th-"
"At this time, yes I get it..." He tucked the psychic paper and pulled out the sonic screwdriver yet again. "But what I'm not getting is why you two are so calm about it. I'd LIKE to think Equestrian guard training is just that good..." He waved it in one of the guards faces, doing a quick scan. "...But I have a bad feeling that's just not the case." he finished as he checked the results. Then, adjusting the setting, he buzzed the guard again. The pony suddenly collapsed boneless to the ground.
This served to finally get a reaction out of his partner. "You are the Doctor!" the pegasus shouted, right before it moved to attack. However a buzz of the screwdriver to the face, and he joined his partner in sudden unconsciousness.
"Yes...yes I am..." Mind control via surgically implanted cybernetics. ...And a form he was disturbingly familiar with. But it couldn't be them...not here...
He suddenly became aware of the crowd of ponies still gaping at him from behind. "Oh, right," he muttered, turning around to face them. "Er...these two should be just fine in a few hours. Still...someone might want to call whatever amounts to medical professionals among you ponies...just to be on the safe side," he told them, the turned and dashed off across the drawbridge.
"ENEMIES OF EQUESTRIA! HEAR ME!" Celestia's voice boomed loud enough to shake the Great Hall. It had been over a century since she'd used the Royal Canterlot Voice, but now was an appropriate occasion as any. She had already cast a shield of her own, covering her guards as they fled to sweep the palace and evacuate any staff or other residents they found to safety. The creatures had continually assaulted her barrier as she waited for her ponies to get clear, but even as the guards had left, allowing them to file into the room and begin to surround her, their combined attacks barely left a dent in her power. But at her shout, they, and their weapons, had suddenly gone quiet.
"YOU HAVE INVADED MY HOME, ATTACKED ME...AND ASSAULTED AND KILLED MY SUBJECTS! HOWEVER, I WILL STILL GIVE YOU ONE CHANCE FOR MERCY, BUT ONLY IF YOU SURRENDER NOW!"
It was nearly dead silent in the hall, except for the faint whirrs of the creatures' movements as several of them glanced at each other. For a moment, Celestia dared to hope that this wouldn't come to further bloodshed. But then...
"DALEKS CONQUER AND DESTROY!" one of them said.
Like a spark on dry wood, this rallying cry rushed through the rest of them.
"DALEKS CONQUER AND DESTROY! DALEKS CONQUER AND DESTROY!"
Celestia's gut went cold as the creatures named themselves. Daleks. Yes she had heard of them, and the refugees' descriptions of these abominations and their cruelties came crashing headlong to the front of her mind. No, for the sake of Equestria, she could only allow this to end one way. She closed her eyes. "...So be it," she said in a near whisper. When her eyes opened again, there were glowing a solid, blinding, white. A swirl of magical energy began to surround the alicorn princess even as the Daleks resumed fire, but as before the attacks broke harmlessly against her barriers. The energy formed into a ball around her, then exploded outwards in a wave of force, scattering Daleks like leaves on the wind.
The Doctor had barely passed through the castle gates when the sound of screaming alerted him to a large object flying straight at him. He quickly took cover as it crashed to the floor right where he would have been. As he emerged, the Doctor turned to see what it had been...and found himself looking at his nightmares. Its casing was dented, cracked, sparking, and leaking a greenish fluid. One of its headlamps was smashed and the glow in its eyestalk was rapidly fading, but it was still immediately recognizable as a Dalek.
"No...no, no, no, NO!" the Doctor raged, glaring at the fallen Dalek even as the glow completely left its eye. "Why...why is it always you! Why are you always there to haunt my path, no matter how many times I stop you, no matter how far I go!" His people had lost everything to them, even their very souls in the end. Yet still they persisted. He had personally destroyed them time and time again, forced to knowingly, commit genocide repeatedly, and still they returned from the brink. Yes, he had stopped them...except for the one time it may have counted. Yes...every time he encountered them, every time they killed an innocent being...he was reminded of the one time he had failed to do everything in his power to destroy them...and doomed his people in the end.
He was brought out of his recriminations be the sounds of conflict ahead of him. He could wallow in the past later. The Daleks were here, now, and they needed to be stopped...and apparently fate had decided to be kind and hand him a break for once. He took his screwdriver and moved over the dead Dalek, to salvage some parts he'd need from it, when he noticed something else. The casing design was the same as that used by the Daleks during and immediately after the time war, but the colors... White and Gold. He'd seen that before, long ago... Icy dread gripped his hearts as he realized the extent of what he was up against, but he pushed through it and quickly got to work.
Celestia shone like the sun she represented as she stood firm in the middle of the Great Hall. The Daleks had regrouped and resumed their attack, but their firepower still proved impotent against her. She responded with streams of solar fire that crackled about the area like whips, melting anything they came into contact with, and burning down Daleks by the dozen. Still, more came, only to join their brethren as part of the glowing piles of slag around her. A part of her despaired at how a force this size had managed to escape her sight at all, let alone one right under her own doorstep. Another worried that this attack didn't consist of all of their forces. But these would be things to solve afterwords. Now she would force these beasts back until they finally took the hint and retreated.
Each green splash of a beam against her barrier just pointed her to yet another target. They seemed determined in their single minded efforts at overwhelming her through sheer numbers. This worried her as well. What she'd been told about these creatures showed her a picture of a cunning and ruthless enemy. And while she was seeing the ruthless side in their continued sacrificing of numbers against her, this tactic was far from cunning. They didn't actually hope to overcome her like this, did they? If so, it would seem they had vastly underestimated her strength.
Then the first magi-bolt hit her shield.
She turned around in surprise, to see a squad of unicorn guards gallop in. For a moment, she thought that they might have come to try and aid her, despite her orders, but then more magi-bolts were hurled at her, and the unicorns began to spread out amongst the Daleks. They were attacking her! Even as she realized this, she instinctively cut off her streams of fire before she inadvertently cut down any of the rogue ponies. Her confusion at this apparent betrayal lasted only long enough for her to get a good look at the faces of some of the apparent traitors. Their faces were utterly blank. Even as they hurled deadly spells at the ruler they were sworn to protect, and sided with these inequine monsters, they showed no emotion whatsoever. She recognized this as a symptom caused by some crude from of mind control, and realized that these ponies were not acting with their own wills.
Even with the aid of their puppets, they were no closer to breaking her defense, but their strategy was effective in one respect: with the guard ponies as essentially equine shields, they had pretty much tied Celestia's hooves as far as offensive options. With any attacks she made against the Daleks, she ran the risk of striking down an essentially innocent pony as well.
"Enough!" she shouted. "What is it that you hope to gain from this? I cannot attack you at the moment, but I will not surrender, as I know what that would mean for Equestria. So what is the point?"
The room quickly went silent as the Daleks and their puppets suddenly stopped attacking. Several of them moved closer and formed a circle around her, just outside her barriers.
"Well?" Celestia asked, glancing at them in confusion.
None of them immediatly responded. Instead, several globes detached themselves from the skirts of the Daleks closest to her, which spaced themselves into a sphere shaped grid around her.
"ACTIVATING ARTRON CAGE!"
Lines of energy sprang out to connect the globes together. Celestia remained baffled by their actions, until her eyes widened in surprise as she felt a pull at her magic. The pull became a pressure, and then the pressure a strain, and then suddenly her defensive barriers collapsed! In shock, Celestia defensively lashed out at the Dalek in front of her. The spell struck the energy grid surrounding her, lighting it up for a moment, before it was reflected back into her stunned face.
For the first time in almost a thousand years, Celestia found herself knocked on her rump.
Refusing to accept this turn of events, Celestia lashed out again, and again. But each time her efforts were absorbed and reflected back by the cage. Finally, she tried to teleport, and for a second, her form winked out...only to wink back in, still inside, and in enough pain that it felt like she had almost been ripped apart. She silently cursed herself as she realized her folly. The Daleks tactics of sending waves of seemingly ineffective and expendable troops at her hadn't been a result of them underestimating her, but a strategy to get her to underestimate them. Then they brought in their mind controlled ponies, playing on her concern for her subjects to get her to stop attacking long enough to spring their trap. Yes...now she saw the cunning. For a moment she considered just letting loose completely in an attempt to break free, but didn't for a couple reasons. First, such a release might need to be strong enough to cause damage far outside the confines of the Great Hall, and second...she wasn't sure if even she could survive that much power being redirected against her if she failed.
"So, what now?" she asked, her voice holding anger, for both the Daleks and herself.
None of them made any direct response, instead one Dalek spoke up.
"PRISONER SECURED, ALERTING THE EMPEROR!"
Celestia's ears perked up. The Emperor? Their leader was coming to collect her in person, then? In that case she might just risk an escape attempt after all if it might mean... She blinked, what was happening? Her view of the Great hall and the Daleks surrounding her was beginning to slowly fade out, a blank, grey metaled room fading into existence over it. Soon enough this room had completely overtaken the great hall, and she realized she had somehow been moved...or rather that this room had somehow been made to appear around her. Either way, she was now someplace other than the Great Hall...
Ditzy and Shine watched from an archway just outside the room in horror as the time ship faded out again. The Daleks had done it, they had actually captured Celestia! As Shine worried about the implications of this, Ditzy just stared worriedly at her father, the controlled unicorn guard nearest where they were concealed. She wondered what they would do with him, now that the goal they'd forcibly recruited him to help achieve had been met...
"GOOD...AFTERNOON...EQUESTRIA!!"
Several dozen Dalek eyestalks, plus a handful + two pony heads, suddenly turned towards the entrance to the Great Hall. There, one hand holding the sonic screwdriver like a microphone, the other carrying a strange device that looked like it was made of spare Dalek parts, was the Doctor. Shine's hearts leaped to her throat while Ditzy just looked at the strange creature oddly.
"Hello, and thank you for joining us! Welcome to our special guests this evening, the Daleks, up to no good as usual!" the Doctor said, speaking like he was hosting some kind of talk show. "From the look of things in here, someone's already had a head start on tonight's activities. Unfortunately, it looks like they didn't mange to finish the job though. Anyway, welcome to another round of Stop the Daleks, I'm your host for the evening, the Doctor!"
The reaction among the Daleks was immediate.
"DOCTOR!"
"THE DOCTOR!?"
"THE DOCTOR IS THE ENEMY OF THE DALEKS!"
"EXTERMINATE THE DOCTOR!"
"EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!"
"Yes yes, blah blah, same old," the Doctor responded, boredly. "So, lets get things started! Part 1..." he held up the Dalek part device, "...Lights out!" There was a small hum as the device switched on...
...And every Dalek's eyestalk and gunstick switched off.
"ALERT! ALERT!"
"VISION IMPAIRED!"
"HELP! HELP!"
Flower Shine felt a giddy smile come to her. ...Ditzy couldn't help but wish he'd come in just a few minutes earlier.
The Doctor just gave a savage grin. "Right now...you lot are going to provide me answers," he said, striding towards the panicking Daleks, who were now blindly attempting to retreat back to their entrance point in the throne room. "I want to know where your leader is, what your plans are, and how you got here, and you can all stumble around in the dark til you tell me!" he demanded.
"DESTROY THE DEVICE!" one of the blinded Daleks ordered.
A Robo-Equine unicorn charged the Doctor, but he quickly stepped out of the way and gave it a buzz with the sonic as it passed and it collapsed, 'deactivated.' "No stalling! -Whoopsie!" He was forced to dodge again as the next unicorn guard attempted to blast him with a magi-bolt. "...So you do have other effects than telekinesis..." he muttered even as he moved to stop this one too.
"Ditzy, no!"
The Doctor looked up in time to see a grey and yellow blur slam into his opponent, dragging them both to the ground.
Ditzy was unaware that the Doctor's srewdriver had actually freed the first guard from Dalek control. All she'd seen was the pony collapsing, so when the next guard to attack had been her father, she acted, launching herself into the air and then dive-bombing the elder Doo, keeping him from hurting the Doctor, but also keeping the Doctor from, she believed, hurting him.
"Papfin, stop!" she pleaded as she tried to pin him down, "Stop, please!"
In the meantime, some of the Daleks had managed to fumble their way back into the destroyed throne room. "RETREAT! RETREAT!"
"ACTIVATE ROBO-EQUINE SELF-DESTRUCT!"
The Doctor went cold. "No, don't...stop!"
Ditzy's impromptu wresting match with her father was suddenly cut short when he stopped fighting her...and started screaming. A scream that was echoed by the other guardponies as, almost as one, they collapsed, twitching, to the floor.
"You didn't have to do this...you didn't NEED to do this!" the Doctor yelled. Dropping the 'Dalek jammer,' he rushed over to where Ditzy was now standing over her father with a look of horror on her face. "Move!" he told her, roughly pushing her away in his haste. He knelt over the seizing pony, trying to hold his head still with his free hand, while cycling the screwdriver through various settings. He kept at it even when the screaming stopped...even when the unicorn stallion stopped moving at all...and even a little after that. Finally, his arm dropped limply to his side and he just knelt there on the foor, unable to take his eyes away from yet another he'd failed to save. "I'm sorry...I'm....I'm so sorry..." And even he wasn't sure who he was telling it to.
Ditzy burst into tears. Flower Shine slowly trotted up behind her and placed a comforting hoof on her shoulder. Then she suddenly found herself nearly knocked over as the pegasus threw herself into a hug, which Shine freely returned, looking over Ditzy's shoulder at the Doctor, sadly.
They vaguely heard the *pop* as the jammer finally failed.
They were still like that when the remaining Daleks returned, their eyes and weapons fully functional again. "DO NOT MOVE! YOU ARE OUR PRISONERS!"
In complete defiance of this, the Doctor stood up and turned to face the nearest Dalek. There was a smoldering fury behind his eyes. "Why?" he asked simply, in a scarily quiet voice.
It didn't take a genius to know what he meant. "BECAUSE, YOU WOULD ATTEMPT TO SAVE THEM," the Dalek answered.
"...You killed them...simply to distract me." It wasn't a question.
"YES."
The Doctor just nodded. "Right then...what are you waiting for? Get on with it."
"YOU ARE OUR PRI-"
"And how well has THAT ever worked out for you?" he asked with a laugh, and not a happy one. "No...just get on with it already!" he yelled, actually causing the Dalek to flinch back a bit.
Shine looked up at him in alarm. He couldn't actually be asking for them to...?
"EXTERMINATE THE DOCTOR!" Several gunsticks swiveled towards him.
Then came the noise...a most glorious and wonderful noise...
Everyone looked up in surprise as it came smashing through one of the large stained glass windows, its form spinning like a top as it came hurtling down.
"ALERT, TARDIS DETEC-" one Dalek tried to get out, before the TARDIS slammed into it and several others nearby, scattering them like oversize bowling pins. It bounced once, ramming over several more Daleks as it finally came sliding to a halt near where the Doctor and the others were. The doors swung open, and out charged Macintosh. The farm pony galloped over then reared up and spun around on his front hooves, slamming his back hooves into the side of a Dalek in the biggest buck of his life so far. It slid across the floor out of control, colliding with the ones in front of the Doctor and knocking them away.
"Come on, Doc!" the earth pony colt exclaimed. "We gotta get scarce!"
This seemed to snap him back to focus. He turned to look behind him, but Shine was already half-carrying Ditzy to the TARDIS. He turned to follow as the Daleks finally snapped out of it as well, and the beams started flying. However, he suddenly stopped short, actually avoiding a shot by coincidence, as he saw something impossible emerge from the TARDIS.
It was only about the height of an average pony's leg, made of a silvery-grey metal...and in the boxy shape of a dog.
"Maximum defense mode!" K-9 shouted, deploying his laser and laying down a stream of cover fire against the Daleks. Meanwhile, Shine and Ditzy ran past him into the still open doors of the TARDIS.
"Doc, move!" Macintosh told him, pushing his head into the Time-Lord's back to try and push him forwards, but the Doctor was still trying to work past the impossibility of a K-9 being here, of all places, to respond.
"Doctor, GET IN HERE!" roared a voice from inside.
Reflexively, the Doctor obeyed, running for the doors with Macintosh right behind him, but inside he was in even more turmoil. Though he hadn't recognized the voice itself, the tone and inflections were...beyond familiar.
He dashed into the console room, Macintosh following. Still laying down fire, K-9 quickly rolled in behind them and, causing a wince from the Doctor, Mac bucked the doors shut. The Doctor turned towards the console to find a little blue unicorn filly with a white and dark-blue mane and tail frantically attempting to work the controls.
"I'll lecture you about whatever you've put this poor thing through later," she said, "If you'll quickly get us out of here, now!"
Numbly, he took over, and a few seconds later the sounds of the TARDIS engines coming up filled the room. Outside, the TARDIS began to glow, and then slowly fade away even as the Daleks pelted it with energy blasts.
Celestia was slowly coming to the conclusion that this course of action was proving futile. She'd been hitting her cage with stronger and stronger attacks...only to receive stronger and stronger retaliations each time. The effort was beginning to take a toll on her too, so she finally called it quits...for now. Stopping to rest, she took a moment to wonder what the Daleks could want with capturing her. Nothing she could think of comforted her. Even just the act of capturing her would mean eventual disaster, as soon it would be time for her to transition the world from day to night, and she doubted she would be able to do her duty from here.
The hiss of a door sliding open caught her attention and she looked up. A pair of Daleks glided into the room, then took positions on either side of the door, turning to face her. And then he entered.
He rode in some sort of device that resembled the bottom half of a Dalek, only it was colored black with silver domes. At the top of this chair was a series of control button and switches, beside which rested a metal, mechanical hand. His torso was thin, missing his left arm, and dressed in black. His face was gaunt, the sockets where she assumed his eyes had once been were empty and black, replaced by a glowing device in the center of his forehead that resembled the eye of a Dalek. his lips were curved in a terrible grin, and his whole head seemed supported by some sort of thin framework that went along the top.
He glided his chair up to her cage. "Ah...Princes Celestia of Equestria..." His voice sounded old and gravelly, with a faint electronic quality that made it sound not unlike that of a Dalek's. "...I have been waiting a long time to finally meet you. I am Davros."